


Refiner's Fire

by Talik_Sanis



Series: Kagami Appreciation Week 2020 [6]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Is Sunshine, F/M, Forging, Friendship, Kagami Appreciation Week, Male-Female Friendship, One-Sided Attraction, Pining, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-18
Updated: 2020-11-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 17:43:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27620183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talik_Sanis/pseuds/Talik_Sanis
Summary: Kagami Tsurugi works on refining her craft, and ponders how best to forge, hone, and polish a blade.Adrien is more than impressed with the one that she has already created.They have a conversation about blades that really has nothing to do with knives or swords.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Kagami Tsurugi, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Kagami Tsurugi (one-sided)
Series: Kagami Appreciation Week 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2000614
Comments: 3
Kudos: 24





	Refiner's Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Kagami Appreciation Week November 18: Blades - Fencing? Kendo? Ice skates? Riposte? Oni Chan? Ryuko? Miss Tsurugi is a sharp young woman who does a good job of being a cut above the rest.

It has been hours since Adrien left her. Hours since he gave her an excuse and told her mother that they were to be studying together. They did fence this afternoon. She would not miss the chance to do so with him, but she regrets it.

Her muscles burn hot.

She should work on her endurance; there are many things that must be honed properly to make a swordswoman.

It is hot.

She is not strong enough to do the work. Tools are required. 

_She_ is hot, perspiring, dripping with fat droplets that she has to mop from her brow as the front of her shirt turns partially translucent and sweat soaks the pits of her arms. The heat cakes grime into her face, flushed and burning as if she's just on the verge of plunging it into the open flame.

It's worse than the inside of a fencer's cage on a blistering day because in those moments she can pace herself and knows what she's doing.

She quenches in oil. A gout of flame rises and retreats as the metal trickles fire. Kagami cannot help but think of Fudō Myōō and his sword of fire, though it is unclear whether the expression associated with him meant “sword of flame” or “treasure sword.”

She has to be guided through every motion, every action.

When she returns to complete the work days later, the smith recommends a composite handle, but Kagami wants the rosewoood which splits, forcing her to try again. Attaching it with metal pins and epoxy, she cracks it with her overly-forceful attempt to press it the last few centimeters, a valley hewn in the wood.

She starts over the next day. There is more instruction, more hand-holding.

It is difficult to shape the handle. Even when she is done, there are two hot-spots at the heel of her palm. Though she seeks to emulate the design of the samples and the many short blades that she has used in the past, she grinds out a handle that is far too close to a perfect cylinder, too rounded, for it to be comfortable.

For such a deceptively simple thing, what the novice believes to be merely a sharpened piece of metal, a blade is surprisingly complicated. Every piece leads to another. The handle rests on the tang; the blade is impossible to wield without the handle; the tang flows into the blade. Guard. Scale. Leather-wrap. Epoxy. Grinds. The proper grit. The skill of every hand that touches every piece and every tool that shapes and produces them.

With the knife hidden in her bag, she returns home. Her mother, having expected her to be home late, does not greet her or question her.

She places the knife atop her trophy shelf in such a way as to ensure that her mother will not touch it when she enters Kagami's room when her daughter is out – as Kagami knows she does – to brush her fingers over the shelf and trophies.

Alya had suggested setting up a camera to record her room when Kagami noted that it seemed as if some of the trophies were slightly displaced on occasion. Kagami noticed such things and the disorganization caused her to scowl when she entered her room after a difficult day.

From her bed, she looks to the trophies.

Fixated, she kept hammering it when it should have gone back into the forge. The knife had to be quenched three times to properly harden it. 

No doubt there are hidden stress fractures. A poor grain structure.

She knows the proper curvature of blades, how they are meant to serve different purposes. She can list off designs and techniques, methods, the various forms of folding and Damascus billets, but she does not know how to forge them - how to shape them into something appealing and how to temper them properly.

It will likely shatter the moment it strikes anything harder than flesh.

Objectively, it is of poor quality.

Subjectively, it is ugly, deformed, misshapen: the handle too short even for her small hand; the form nothing like the design she had intended, though the smith told her to start with something more straightforward; its shape was almost purely ground out, rather than forged.  
  
She will never trust it in an actual fight.

When she looked at her trophies, she felt pride.

But when she lifts her gaze up, above the trophies, looking at that unstable blade, she feels something else entirely. She rests, enjoying the sensation of static in the air before a storm, the taste of Marinette's chocolate chip cookies and orange juice, and the sight of Adrien's smile all rolled into one.

She phones Adrien and they chat for a very long time, finding things to talk about. Discovering things.

“It sounds like you had a really successful first try.” The enthusiasm infects her with his giddiness and she has to roll over onto her belly to just rest her face in her pillow for a moment to calm down.  
  
“We have very different definitions of success, Adrien.”

“You made a knife! You finished it. That's amazing on its own, Kagami.” His voice is a strange mixture of awed hush and a cheer.

Why must he always, _always_ be so proud of her?

“I am not satisfied with it. It does not really feel like I made it, in the end. I was mostly my teacher.”

“You don't have to settle,” he says through the line and there is a shuffle or scrape from beyond him, in the darkness of his room. “If it's not right, you can make another one.”

“I do not believe that I will.” She looks to the ugly blade, and it makes her feel better for some reason.

“I thought that you were interested in bladesmithing.”

“Interested, yes,” she affirms without care. It is easy to sound like she does not care. “But it was merely an exploration. Not something that I wish to devote myself to.”

“Just because you're not devoted to it doesn't mean you can't practice or enjoy it.” He is trying to comfort her. She recognizes the oscillation in his voice, the uncertainty that he expresses whenever they are together, the one that hurts her. “I'm not going to be a fencer, and I still do it.”

It is amazing that he has become good enough to challenge even her when he does it only for his father. She would never defeat him were he to be truly invested. If he actually, truly _wanted_ to try.

“We are different people in that regard.” It is a retreat into the obvious as she turns over onto her side, shifting the phone to her other hand.

“Yeah. You can focus on one thing. I can't really do that.” He sounds regretful as if he has just been caught in a half-lie.

“On the contrary. It is ... too easy for me to become fixated on things.”

“Isn't that how you get good at them?” He is confused, and the sound is actually somewhat adorable.

“I merely see the goal and the steps needed to reach it.”

Indeed. She sees _merely_ them. She sees them so clearly that all the winding paths that lead to her destination fall away, and she cannot find them.

That is not entirely a strength.

She is never going to be a bladesmith, nor does she wish to be. Her one path is clear and though she was set down it by her mother, it is one that she has made her own by choosing it, for unlike Adrien, she has the will to make the choice; her mother has not beaten it out, purged the impurity with shame and guilt. Her mother hones will like a knife's edge, because it is the one Tomoe walks and the one that keeps her safe.

Her work is indeed inelegant, but it serves as a reminder.

“I am pleased that I was able to have the experience, though.”

“Then I'm glad that we were able to sneak you out and be rebellious again.” The smirk is clear in his voice. It's almost visible, haunting Kagami's bedroom.

It is good to be forced to remember that even on the only path she can see, grass and flowers bloom between the cracks. There are hands that laid the stone; earth from which the rocks were exhumed so that they could be fit into place, and, more than that, there are the bones of the earth underneath her feet – under feet that fly so fast she barely touches the ground.

“Perhaps you can arrange a lesson on the physics of bladesmithing, Adrien. I think that I would find it fascinating.”

His unseen smile through the line is a whole host of spirits, like the fog of oil-steam off a quenching blade, that torment her.

“I'd love to.”


End file.
